Parts of the Whole
by Inexplicably Waiting
Summary: Transitioning roles in the imprint-process are always difficult, but this one will no doubt be the hardest yet and that's before considering the changes and complications that will take everyone in La Push by surprise. Quil x Claire
1. Chapter 1: Summer Daydreams

**Chapter 1: Summer Daydreams**

She lay on her bed staring at the heavily glittered flower design gracing her ceiling, lost in thoughts of _him_. Why the builder of the house thought it was a good idea to use some sort of construction paste to smear a giant flower on her bedroom ceiling and then cover it in large pieces of glitter was incomprehensible to her. It was tacky. Even tackier though, were the similar floral monstrosities in the other rooms of the house. That's right...there were sparkle flowers on the ceilings of _every_ room in the house, many of them larger and more detailed than the one above her. Although the public areas of the house – the kitchen, living room, etc. - were home to the largest and most ostentatious, the flower crafted on the ceiling of _his_ room amused her the most. A grown man with a giant sparkley flower above his bed, it was just funny.

Granted, she didn't think of him as a grown-up. He had too many boyish characteristics – seemed too young - to include 'man' in any description of him. The words 'boy' or 'guy' seemed more appropriate. Not that she didn't fully realize he was a _man_. In fact, she was all too aware of his masculinity.

She heard him open the door to his room, just on the other side of the wall at the head of her bed. She turned down the soft music she had playing just enough to hear him sit down at his desk chair. He had to pay a few bills before they made their way over to First Beach for a pack beach day and barbecue, to be followed by the traditional tribal bonfire.

It was a beautiful day, the kind where all you want is access to the fresh air and sunshine. The type of day rarely seen in La Push, Washington. She was determined to take full advantage of the weather. She may have to wait a bit longer for some quality sun on the beach, but for now she had most of the windows in the house thrown wide open and all the lights turned off, letting the natural sunlight illuminate the rooms. The curtains of her bedroom window were being blown gently by the breeze, which in addition to the music of _Ivy_ playing low in the background, was enough to make her feel perfectly content to remain splayed out on her bed in just her bathing suit and a pair of barely-there jean shorts all day. She knew he hated the shorts. Every time she wore them he got this strained look on his face then furrowed his brow, pinched the bridge of his nose while closing his eyes and letting his head fall forward, with his chin almost touching his chest, and sighing as he told her to go change. If she was being totally honest with herself, she liked to wear them sometimes just to annoy him.

The sound of him standing up from his chair brought her back from her thoughts. She could tell by the sound of his steps, however absurdly quiet they might be, that he was on his way to her door.

If she had ever voiced the thought out loud, she knew it would sound crazy, even to herself, but she was unnaturally attuned to his movements. Hell, to everything about him. She just knew. They didn't have to be in the same room for her to be able to tell what movements he was making, what kind of mood he was in, often she could even tell you what he was feeling down to the expression on his face. Just being within a certain radius of each other, regardless of walls separating them, their visibility to each other, even their states of consciousness, she always had at least a vague sense, if not a certainty, of anything and everything that involved him.

He knocked on the frame of her open door as he passed by it, and let her know without looking in, "I'm all done, love. Meet you downstairs in two, I'm just gonna grab us some towels." He had always called her love, ever since she could remember. But now the word made her heart flutter everytime he said it. No matter how many times she mentally scolded herself for the reaction because she knew he didn't mean it the way she wanted him to, it was only habit, she couldn't find it in herself to acknowledge her fantasies as just that – fantasies - and finally accept that it was all just her hopelessly romantic high school daydreams...not reality.

Maybe it was from living together for so long, or from always having been so close. Maybe she was so in love with and obsessed with him that she had deluded herself into believing that something about their connection or relationship was special, different.

Or maybe she was just crazy.

**Author's Note: So this is a plotline I've had in mind for a while. I've also got a Leah x Embry story on the go, but since I had yet to receive any reviews at all and I was more excited about this story anyway, I've decided to pick up on this one for a while. If anyone reads my Leah x Embry fic, likes it, and wants me to continue, I'd be more than happy to do so. I've got a lot of spare time and do really enjoy writing "Lost and Found" as well, all it'll take is a review or two and I'll keep updating both simultaneously. Reviews are always good (even when they're not favorable)! **


	2. Chapter 2: Feelings

**Chapter 2: Feelings**

Her relaxed breathing had an incredibly calming effect on his mood. She was lying in the middle of her bed with the window open, allowing the breeze in, listening to her favorite 'chill-tune' (her words, not his), _Ivy_'s "Edge of the Ocean". It really was a beautiful day, especially for the Olympic Penninsula.

Calm was something he could definitely use a little more of in his life. It wasn't as though things had become particularly chaotic, the chaos was in his head. Generally, everything was pretty much the same as it had always been – work, pack duties, and _her_. That was the problem though... _her_.

He'd been so busy taking care of her, making sure she was safe, happy, and thriving, that he hadn't even noticed her grow up. And she was grown up alright, overnight it seemed to him. It was a maturity he was all too aware of. Everything about her was adult now. She had only one more week of high school left, legally she was an adult, and he hadn't had to ground or punish her in any way for going on three years. Her mental maturity was not nearly as disconcerting to him though as her physical maturity. She was definitely _all_ grown up.

That was a train of thought he tried his hardest to steer clear of though, nothing good was going to come from his inappropriate fantasizing. And really, if he let those thoughts continue, it only ended painfully for him, not to mention the dirty feeling he had for them even being there in the first place... the thoughts that is.

He got up from the kitchen table, walked to his room at the other end of the house, and attempted to clear his mind. He just had to finish paying a few bills and then they'd be off to an all-day pack event at First Beach.

While paying the bills, he found himself frequently distracted, his focus disrupted by her content mood. Her moods always affected him in this way. Whether good or bad, happy or sad, affectionate or angry, her mood was almost guaranteed to distract him. He knew that his sensitivity to her, to every aspect of her, was a result of the imprint but, he was fairly certain that, even compared to other imprints, their bond was unique, more intense and all-encompassing. He was reasonably convinced that the imprint produced similar effects for her, in regards to an exceptionally heightened awareness of him, though he had never found the right words or appropriate time to ask. As far as he was aware, no other imprintees had ever developed an imprint (or something similar) themselves. It was often as though she was as attuned to him as he was to her.

After finishing up the bills, a task which had taken significantly longer than it should have thanks to his wandering thoughts, he stood and followed the familiar pull towards the open door of her bedroom. Rather than stopping and leaning against the doorframe to silently bask in her current blissful state, as he wished to do, he instead only knocked on the doorframe as he passed by, not even indulging in a glance through the doorway.

"I'm all done, love. Meet you downstairs in two, I'm just gonna grab us some towels." He had always called her 'love', but the sentiment behind the endearment was now drastically different than it had been when he had begun using the term while she was young.

From the very first moment he had laid eyes on her at the age of sixteen, he had loved her, then just a toddler of two, and known that, beginning in that instant, she would forever be his entire world.

But the love he felt for her the day he had imprinted (and for approximately fifteen years following that day) and the love he felt for her now were two totally different and distinct emotions. He had always loved her, but now he was undeniably _in_ love with her.

As he searched the linen closet for beach towels among the plethora of unused linens, bath towels, wash cloths, etc., he sensed a small shift in her mood. She remained generally peaceful, but a slight excitement and anxiety were thrown into the mix, along with something else.

This was not the first time he had felt this new sensation from her recently. He had yet to understand what exactly it was she was feeling, but it was definitely new and definitely confusing. For her as well, it seemed. Everytime he had picked up on this new feeling of hers, it had been accompanied by a very subtle hint of uncertainty, as though she was appreciative of the sentiment's existence but was either unsure of its identity or cause, or unsure of the implications.

The mystery emotion, however, didn't worry him too much, since he had sensed it from her only while he was in close proximity, not while she was out of his sight. _She_ was typically clearest to him when he was near. As the distance of their seperation increased, _she_ would clarify only when projecting negative emotions. '_She_' being the term by which he thought of and mentally referred to her entire being, body, soul, and spirit, and into which the special imprint-bond allowed him enhanced insight, a connection he liked to call their 'channel'. Should she suffer any distress or trauma, whether physical or otherwise, his previously distance-impaired awareness and perception of her would suddenly, intensely magnify. This amplified 'emergency' version of their usual channel allowed him to better and more efficiently protect her, and had come in handy several times over the years given her undeniable, though apparently unintentional, reckless streak.

This facet of their relationship had warned him the day she had run out of gas half-way home from visiting her sister in Seattle one night last summer. She had forgotten her cell phone on the kitchen counter on her way out the door the previous morning and, miles from the last town she had passed through, alone, in the dark, she had been panicked, clueless as to what course of action she should take.

When he had later asked if she had been afraid, a question he had regretted asking ever since because of the disregard for her own personal safety her answer had revealed, she had responded that her real dilemna had been figuring out what he would want her to do. She explained that she hadn't really been scared, she never felt fear for her physical well-being, and would have willingly walked the ten miles or so back to the last town to grab gas, but she knew this would have gotten her grounded for weeks, if not months... heck, maybe even until she turned eighteen and legally became an adult. She elaborated, though, that the primary reason for her consideration of what he would want her to do was that, above anything and everything else, she didn't want to disappoint him or cause him any more anxiety than was absolutely necessary. He almost cried.

She was familiar his misgivings about being alone at night, especially anywhere near a forest and/or not in La Push. How could she not be? He had drilled the 'safety rules' into she and her sister since before they had come to live with him. When each had reached the age of twelve, they had individually been made aware of the "unique role" played by many members of their extended family within the La Push community and the reality behind the 'safety rules', which both had made an effort to observe faithfully, even if just to provide comfort to their loved ones (as he suspected was the case in _her_ compliance).

Faith in the dependability of the little alarm feature of their imprint was the basis for his confidence that this new emotion of hers was nothing to be too concerned over. In the past, emotions of confusion or those that were new, unusual, or unexpected had always sent up warning flags, eliciting a temporary, watered-down version of the channel's 'emergency' state, a full-blown case of which was typically triggered by fear, pain, rage, or heartache. This pseudo-emergency status usually lasted just long enough to allow him to identify the oddity and (hopefully) its source, determine whether or not she was in any sort of danger, and with a bit of luck, quickly establish her overall welfare.

Just after she had turned sixteen and gotten her license, the first long-distance drive she had made on her own had been to drive to Seattle to visit her sister at school. The moment the car had disappeared from sight as she drove away he rushed to nervously sit at the kitchen table, next to the phone. He stared at the wall for four and a half hours until she called to let him know she had arrived safely. He had been so concerned beforehand about the drive that he was surprised to feel her suddenly become uneasy later that night.

He called her cell phone, she didn't pick up. He called her sister's cell phone, she didn't pick up either. His last phone call option had been to call the dorm phone, still no answer. Panicking at this point, he began a mad dash for Seattle. On his way there, her unease increased and she began to feel frighteningly uncomfortable, she was worried about something. Sprinting while phased, he managed the run in just over an hour. Had he not been forced to stick to forested areas and avoid habitation, he would have accomplished the journey in less time, a fact of which he was fully mindful and overwhelmingly annoyed by.

When he arrived at the dorm, he found the girls watching a movie with the lights off, her sister on her own bed messing around with some boy, while _she_ was left to sit on the roommate's bed with another guy who was persistently trying to make moves on her and had become slightly forceful upon finding himself unwelcome. He had nearly killed the kid right there. If not for feeling her gentle touch on his arm, calming him down, he might have. Needless to say those particular boys, and possibly other potentials who heard about 'the huge, crazy guardian', had steered clear of her sister from that day forward.

Since the appearance of this as-of-yet unnamed feeling of hers, he had yet to be alerted by its presence while she was away from him. As long as she was only feeling it when he was close enough to ensure it was not the result of some less-than-pleasant situation, he was willing to accept it as a mystery and not probe too deeply for the sake of her privacy. Its presence had yet to visibly affect her attitude or actions, so he assumed it was probably just a normal teenage 'personal identity discovery' thing, like he had read about in those "Raising a Teenager in the 21st Century"-type books when she was nine and her sister had just turned thirteen.

Still searching the linen closet for large beach towels, he turned to look at her as she exited her room and approached him, hoping that the change in her mood might make itself known by looking at her. The sight awaiting him as his view shifted to her caused him to quickly force his focus back to the closet, to his search.

He was far from being prepared to deal with this today...


	3. Chapter 3: PG Shorts?

**Chapter 3: PG Shorts?**

_He was far from being prepared to deal with this today..._

She was wearing shorts, _the_ shorts, and a bikini top. That was it. No shirt, just the tiniest shorts he was pretty sure La Push had ever seen and two scraps of fabric held to her upper-body by some string, leaving absolutely nothing to the imagination.

She knew how he felt about those particular shorts. Well, maybe she didn't _actually_ know how he felt about them, but she definitely knew what his reaction would be, the same reaction he had shown every other time she had donned the undeniably flattering shorts. In all honesty he loved them, thought they were the sexiest article of clothing (if they could even be considered as such) known to man. He just couldn't handle the impact they had on him... physically. And he certainly couldn't handle the response they elicited from others, specifically male 'others'.

Without allowing the focus of his gaze to veer away from the linen closet and drift naturally to the temptress standing next to him, he simultaneously pinched the bridge of his nose and let his head droop forward, chin nearing his chest, while sighing, "Don't make me say it..."

"Don't make you say what?" Oh, she wanted to play innocent did she? He was fairly confident that some- if not most- of the time she did it just to push his buttons because she knew that it bothered him when she wore the shorts.

"You know exactly what I'm talking about. We're attending a pack function not Spring Break in Cozumel. That means families with children, not hormone-driven teenagers and college coeds." Okay, so the remaining 'active' pack members, those still phasing on a regular basis and therefore not aging, technically _were_ hormonal teens, perpetually frozen at the age of their first phase, seventeen in his case, but she didn't need to be reminded of that fact.

"Do you think your attire is entirely appropriate for the expected PG environment?" He didn't think he could take the exposure to the fantasies he was guaranteed to be subjected to the next time he patrolled that her present apparel was sure to inspire in some of the unimprinted wolves, especially the younger ones with less developed control over their thoughts. Not to mention the torture of knowing that strangers he didn't even know, whose minds he would never have access to, would also daydream after getting a glimpse of her in that. Who knew what kind of pervert's imagination she might become a star in?

"Well I was planning to put on a tank before we left, it's down with my bag. Wouldn't want the sight of me to leave any poor innocents scarred for life or anything..." Dripping with sarcasm, and accompanied by a look she had quickly mastered through imitation around age twelve, after spending years observing her sister perfect it, involving both narrowing and rolling the eyes at the same time.

Boy, he sure knew how to sink her mood without trying, from content to upset in under ten seconds. And she knew how to make him painfully aware of the sting she felt from the perceived insult, while ensuring that he was consumed by a stifling sense of guilt for the unintentional offense. A guilt which invariably provoked his surrender in any argument and, in this particular case, prompted him to face her at last, desperate to clarify his previous statements.

He placed an index finger under her chin, using the digit to gently turn her head back in his direction, hoping to entice her eyes to meet his.

"Hey, you know that's not what I meant..." He softly protested, relocating his hand from under her chin to slowly graze her cheek. Her eyes were beginning to mist alarmingly.

"Well then what _did_ you mean? Because as far as I can see, either you think I look like a tramp or I look hideous in these shorts and you just haven't had the balls to tell it to me straight." Where did she come up with these things? Her imagination must constantly work in overdrive.

He used his thumbs to wipe away her now silently falling tears. Gazes still locked, he whispered "Silly woman. Silly, silly... _beautiful_... but nonetheless silly woman. You are the most perfect creature on this earth and you think that either of those two options was what I was implying?" He lightly kissed her nose. She was mesmerized, there was no other way to describe it. "You look absolutely stunning right now... hell, all the time really. The shorts and bikini are both unbelieveably sexy... You have no idea." He chuckled. He had never so blatantly confessed the desirability she held for him. Her eyes began to widen in disbelief.

"The problem with them, the shorts that is, is that every living being of the male persuasion within a ten mile radius shares my opinion of them and I really don't feel like being incarcerated for mass homicide today and wasting such terrific weather. Now do you understand what I mean?" The only reply she managed, as he subtly retreated by dropping his hands and slightly stepping backwards, was a soft nod of her head, as she continued to unblinkingly stare at him.

She remained in this state, as he slowly backed away and continued his quest for beach towels, until he began to worry about her sudden immobility.

"Are you okay? What's wrong?" He was beginning to become concerned about her mental stability.

"Sexy...?" She whispered almost so low that a normal human would have had difficulty hearing it. "You said sexy and... and... and you used the word woman. Not girl, woman." Her voice consistently increased in volume as she vocalized these observations. He felt a blush rise in his cheeks.

"Here we go, good beach towels! Uh...we should probably be going... yeah come on, let's get going! Don't want to miss out on any of this rare, fine weather!" He was babbling out of nervousness and embarassment. He knew it, she knew it, and they both knew that the other knew it.

With a skeptical glance, she agreed, " You're right, but don't think that swimming, food, sun, and a bonfire will make me forget. Don't fool yourself into thinking that this conversation is over or that you can somehow manage to avoid it."

At a volume she should not have been able to hear, he sighed, "Wouldn't dream of it..."

She should not have been able to hear it, no normal human being should have been able to hear it, but still...she did.


End file.
